; then, once again on their own ground, they would weaken and pretend to have no precise know¬ ledge. Wherever one attacked such apostles, one’s hand met foul slime. If one smote one of them so crushingly that, with the bystanders looking on, he had no course but to agree, and if one thought one had gained at least one step, he merely showed great astonishment the next day. The Jew entirely forgot what had been said the day before and repeated his shameful old story as if nothing had happened, pre¬ tended anger and amazement and forgetfulness of everything except that the debate had proved the truth of his assertions.
I was often left staring. One did not know which to admire most—their glibness or their artfulness in lying. I gradually began to hate them.
All this had one good side. In the sphere in which the carriers, or at least the propagators, of Social Democracy came under my eye, my love for my own national inevitably increased.
Under the inducement of my everyday experience, I now began to seek out the sources of the Marxian doctrine. Its workings were